Negotiating The Middle East's Bizarre Bazaar: A Parable

Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, they burble and coo, apparently the only word those professional soothsayers know, even in the face of dictators whose hole card lies open on the table: like the ace of spades, signifying martyrdom. As the centrifuges continue to whirr and more cascades for preparation of fissile uranium are mounted, the essential partner for diplomatic dealings remains unknown: is he perhaps Muhammed al-Mahdi, the hidden 12th Imam, the Messiah of the Shia, who must be called down to appear and destroy the world. It seems impossible for our paltering Western compromisers to grasp their end game, which lies open and obvious. Its fundamental modality however was played out to me simply more than decades ago.

In May 1964, my wife and children accompanied me to Jerusalem as guests of President Shazar. During the first week of receptions and meetings in Jerusalem, with visits to Jaffa and Tel Aviv our son Adam, then 6, pestered us to buy a kaffiyeh, that checkered headcloth later made notorious by Yasser Arafat. Pulling us into tourist shops where we paused to check their price, ranging from 12-16 lira, paltry enough.

I kept putting him off, arguing we’d find them cheaper elsewhere. (We had resided all that year in Italy and were used to the humor and chitchat of bargaining.) At the end of that week, Shazar said he had a busy weekend in store, and proposed to send us for 3 days to Kfar Blum, an "Anglo-Saxon" kibbutz up north on the Jordan river, where they were straightening its narrow stream, teaching Ethiopians modern agronomy. A flourishing place, the former swamps drained) and huge tanks built for carp, the fields growing cotton and alfafa, and flourishing orchards along the shore.